The Term “Computer” Used to Refer to Humans Fact
The term “computer” used to refer to humans who did computations (“computer” used to be a job description, not a machine).
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace was a British mathematician and poet credited for writing one of the first computer programs. She was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron and protege of the father of computing Charles Babbage. Although her accomplishments are more complex than “first computer programmer” (that title more accurately belongs to Babbage), she is often remembered for writing one of the first pieces of complex executable computer codes… in 1842, over 100 years before the first electronic computer was created.
Lovelace wasn’t “the world’s first coder”, but she was the first to suggest that computers could do more than just calculate numbers, a line of thinking that Turning would explore 100 years later in his famous paper on “can machines think?“.
“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform… But it is likely to exert an indirect and reciprocal influence on science itself.” – Ada Lovelace
“Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace’s objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do.” – Alan Turing
Factoids tagged with "Ada Lovelace"
Charles Babbage is the Father of the Computer Fact
Charles Babbage can be considered “the father of the computer” as he invented the first mechanical computer (the Difference Engine 1822) and ”the first general-purpose computer” (the Analytical Engine 1837).
Machines Can Think Fact
Whether or not machines can think, depends on our definition of “think.” Generally we can say, machines can think, but they think differently than humans.
Alan Turing is the Father of Computer Science and AI Fact
Alan Turing can be considered “the father of computer science and AI.” Turing made major contributions to computing, codebreaking, and even helped the Allies win WWII.
Ada Lovelace Was Lord Byron’s Daughter Fact
Ada Lovelace was the child of influential British poet Lord Byron. She is better known for writing the world’s first computer program.
Ada Lovelace Wrote the First Computer Program Myth
British mathematician Ada Lovelace can be considered the mother of computer programing, as she wrote the first complex algorithm meant to be carried out by a machine. However, it is a myth that Ada Lovelace wrote “the first computer program” or was “the first computer programmer”, that title belongs to Charles Babbage.